Of Gods and Monsters (Khyvas/Closed)

Davey sat on a park bench staring at the hairs on his arm. They twitched in the air, back and forth, the goose pimples of his skin reacting to the cold breeze. Lines of scars, mottled by lumps. Human skin was fascinating. He raised a jagged bitten nail to his flesh and scraped slowly across the surface, the thin layer of white peeling off in an uneven line.

Picking the skin free he tossed it into the air in front of him his eyes meeting a gang of youths across the street. There were three of them, in hoodies and black jeans. Street thugs. Davey knew them as small fry. Not even worth being on his radar. His eyes dropped as a car passed by obscuring his vision.

Why was he here? No reason. Well. There was a reason. His hand raised to his neck scratching as a black serpentine body rotated downwards hiding under his collar. Davey craned his neck back looking up and down the street. Usually he went for young ladies. No preference. They just tasted better. Specifically they had to be young. Older woman wore too much perfume, horrible taste that. Got stuck in your teeth, that and the lipstick.

Oh.

Yes. Davey is a cannibal. Well . . . not really. His quirk didn’t really allow for anything but that description. It changed him. He was a cannibal. A man eater. Davey was a monster and oh boy . . . the Benefactors hadn’t fed him in a while. Sometimes he thought that they used him as a beastly waste disposal. They kept him anonymous, everybody thought he’d die ages ago and in turn Davey did all the jobs they didn’t want to do.

However. His quirk required feeding. It was paramount. So Davey would sneak out, pick a few ladies off the side of the street . . . seduce them . . . take them back to his place . . . devour them whole . . . you know, somebody would think he had a problem. But nope. Not at all. A man had to eat.

He stood stretching, his muscles clicking and his jaw cracking. He had a craving, his skin had a craving. It felt tight, like a plastic bag had been stretched hard across his face; except that wasn’t the issue at all! He could breathe just fine, he just couldn’t . . .breathe? Y’know. It’d be damn rude to himself if he didn’t stretch soon. You know. A good and proper stretch.

Davey turned and walked towards the alley behind the park bench, he was fully aware he was being followed by the three thugs and he simply did not care.

He was hungry.

As his footfalls echoed down the alleyway smoke started to stream from his mouth as his skin grew tighter . . .

The thugs walked down the alleyway, Joss at the front. Joss who had stoneflesh was their brawler, usually the guy who did the mugging while the other two watched. That guy they were following was strange, there was something wrong with him. He’d just been smiling the entire time staring at his arm, he was clearly on some sort of drug.

“Hey Joss” said Malcolm, a shark headed man “Is it misty here to you?”.

Joss raised a hand and trailed it through the thick grey mist that rolled over his granite skin. Malcolm was right, this was unnatural. Was this some sort of quirk effect? A misting? He’d heard about those people, they just vomited fog everywhere. Wait. Joss raised his hand again, this time to stop Malcolm.

“Where’s Wayne?” he said looking to his right. He was sure Wayne had been trailing beside them. When had his footsteps stopped? This was getting uncomfortable. This was almost like a tra-

A scream behind him.

Joss spun quirk flaring, his muscles howling with limestone. He just saw Malcolm vanish into the mists dragged by his legs. The rockman roared running into the mists and the more he ran the more lost he became. He was being guided. Following shadows in circles. Around and around.

Slowly the mist cleared.

Joss stood alone. His friends and the stranger were nowhere to be seen. As he slowly walked uncomfortably to the exit of the alley a single drop of blood splashed on the ground in front of him.

He looked up.

A glistening eyeless skull looked back, teeth dripping in blood, gore and sinew trickled a single thread of gristle down onto his face.

Joss howled.

738

“C’mon man, you know I wouldn’t ask this if it wasn’t a big deal.” The Desk Sergeant of the 13th Precinct said, pleading his case to the armored hero standing across from it. “Look, you know we’re short staffed, for both cops and heroes in this neighborhood. Too many Trigger users running around and the local street gangs don’t exactly help with that issue.”

With a heavy sigh, Khyvas leaned forward to rest his upper body on the desk before replying, saying “And Quintein, you know my powers aren’t exactly at their peak during night hours, plus I’ve been at this all day man. You sure there isn’t anybody else you could call for this?”

“Man, you think you’re at the top of my list?!” Exclaimed Khyvas’ old friend and liaison. “Look man, I love you, I really do, but I realize you are two steps closer to being jack shit at night time. That said though, you got the name attached to you. Niggas ain’t messing with the guy named Knightfall, let alone the fact that I’ve seen you work before you were Knightfall, so I know you know how to handle yourself, with or without powers. So quit playing around man, help us out.”

Khyvas clsoed his eyes and lowered his head, letting out a heavy sigh as he did so. Quintein was right, Khyvas did know how to fight without using his powers, almost entirely actually, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have a set of tools that helped him fight at night, i.e “grenades” he could simply drain his own solar energy out of to restore his body’s reserves, and his super strength and durability didn’t exactly go away unless he lit up a city block, so he wouldn’t exactly be without if he took this one night patrol, but it would basically leave him resting the entire next day. To add to it, there was still the mythos attached to the name Knightfall. Simply hearing would mark lesser criminals as the ones who had to hide that night, so in theory, this would be an easy patrol.

“Alright Q, you suck but you make a point. You got me for the next eight hours.” He said to the Desk Sergeant.

It would not be an easy patrol.

Khyvas wasn’t too far into it, perhaps just a few minutes or so past full sundown when he noticed a trio of idiots start to tail a singular young man walking home. Picking up on their trail, Khyvas decided to follow them to catch them when they tried to pull their stunt, a small paycheck to be had but one more than worth earning.

It wasn’t no more than five minutes into this trailing that shit hit the fan in the worst possible way; the guy they were following decided to use their quirk to defend themselves. Something not unheard of, and even permissible in situations like these, but something was off about it, and Khyvas’ uneasiness was confirmed to be the right protocol when he came across a patch of fresh blood on the ground that was far too big to be from a non-lethal wound, a patch found as soon as the first guy disappeared.

“You’re not defending yourself....you’re...hunting them. Oh no...” The Armored Knight said to himself before readying himself for combat, knowing damn well he had a situation on his hands. As he reported the incident to the 13th before giving chase, Khyvas made the motions to get to higher ground. While he may not have possessed superhuman agility, he was still plenty able to bounce around to climb the modern but crumbling landscape, and the second he caught eyes on the lone survivor, a man made of rock it seemed, Khyvas leapt down and bolted, making a beeline straight for the man, for right above him was something unfriendly and ready to pounce.

Right as the target was about to make the drop on the unsuspecting, screaming fool, Khyvas intercepted and ripped the man from where he was, successfully saving his ass and throwing him far and away from the smokey fog that seemed to envelop the area. “Run you idiot, and don’t let me catch you out here again or I’ma bust your bitch ass!” Khyvas yelled before turning around to face the newfound villain.

To say it was ugly would be rather accurate, but it wasn’t anything Khyvas hadn’t quite seen before; beastial and monster type mutant quirks weren’t that rare anymore, so it wasn’t like Khyvas hadn’t seen or fought against them before, but this one...This one was different.

The feeling of uneasiness continued, and Khyvas hated fighting at night, but alas, the clarion call of heroism rang ever louder, right?

WC: 791
GP: 15

He landed five feet away from the Hero craning his neck and cracking his jaw open, strands of saliva clung from the ceiling of his mouth and dripped down into his throat. The mist began collapsing inwards, evaporating and being absorbed into the flesh of the beast. Moments passed before the creature craning its neck back downwards towards the newcomer.

This Hero was different, he’d seen this type before, something about them that fate had decided would stand out. This man wasn’t nameless, he wasn’t like those small fry who were just gosh darn rude, this guy, this guy had a bearing about him. Important Heroes always did, it was the difference between a hero and a sidekick y’know. Heroes knew if their sidekick was something more. Just like villains knew if the heroes they stared down meant actual business.

He’d fed, that was really the only thing Iko cared about, but one of them had got away. . .  thrown away by the hero. Now wasn’t that just rude? Why did these hero folks always like to ruin his hard earned meal, he’d given them a chance! They could’ve turned around, not followed and ran away. But they didn’t. Why was it Iko’s fault if they’d been so weak?




The words cracked from his jaws, outside of the sound of bone grating against muscle the words weren’t muffled or even indistinguishable, to most people it would seem like he’d slipped on a helmet, but a helmet? This was not.




Iko lifted two claws in a shrugging motion.



The beast leapt in the air, it’s muscular legs performing the motion with ease as he grabbed the side of the alleyway, hanging from it like an ape would a tree the claws cutting into the concrete like butter.



His muscles tensed and he flung himself up and out onto the rooftop. Of course the hero would follow, they always did, even the important ones. Sometimes if they were lucky Iko spared them just to send a message back, other times he ate them if they didn’t interest him enough and most of the time all of them ended up regretting their decision.

The creature audibly sighed flexing its muscles, bones cracking and shifting under the flesh, reforming into a more dynamic configuration of movement. His ape like stature morphed into a more humanoid form. It wasn’t really a power of his quirk, it was sort of like . . . popping your knuckles and putting them back into a place you preferred, come to think of it, that wasn’t really a thing humans did. Bother.



Oh.




He said as a grin spread across his face, those pearly white teeth licked clean of gristle and blood.

519

As to what exactly Khyvas had found himself face to face with was a question to be had at an entirely different time than now.

While he knew most "monster" sightings were just people with mutation quirks, Khyvas couldn't help but feel like he owed a small apology to those regular people who had seen what they believed to be a monster, because at this moment in time, Khyvas found himself a knight staring down a demon.

It studied him for a brief second, causing Knightfall's muscles to tense and ready for action as he heard what sounded like bones being crushed underfoot, and then it began to speak. It called him rude for saving the life of the guy he was about to kill. Before Khyvas could respond noting the audacity of such a thing, the villain leaped into the air, landing on a rooftop, a feat not too shocking considering this was lower Manhattan and the buildings weren't too terribly tall around these parts for the residential ones, but it was still pretty good and told Khyvas that this villain definitely possessed immense bodily power, that he would have to be careful with dealing with this threat.

That said however, Khyvas was no slouch either, and even if it was night time, he still had a few aces in his sleeve, and as such yelled back to his opponent "Funny, you're the one that just leaped to the top of a building to get away from me. If you wanna keep things getting any messier, you'd bring ya ass down here right now and surrender, before I have to go there and make you bring that ass down here."

He added his typical New York twist of an accent to the taunt, trying to edge his way into the enemy's psyche and get him to come back down so Khyvas wouldn't have to be the one chase a monster up a damn building, and as to whether or not the beast would take the bait would wait until Khyvas finished his mock countdown.

"You got until the count of three, biggun`" He said, "One....Two...."

WC: 360
GP Made: 7
GP To Date: 22